Education Week staff writer Christina A. Samuels provides insight, news, and analysis on early-childhood education. Her co-blogger, Lillian Mongeau, covers news, trends, and policy in early education. She is also the California Correspondent for The Hechinger Report.

Sex Education for Kindergarteners?

A proposed sex-education curriculum that would start for children as early as kindergarten is causing quite a stir in a Montana school district.

The Helena Public Schools Board of Trustees heard public comment on the 62-page proposal for health education, which includes sex education in grades K-12, before a large crowd at a meeting Tuesday night. The Montana Family Foundation president, Jeff Laszloffy, went on Fox News to slam it, saying he doesn't believe children that young can emotionally deal with what they would be taught.

But if you read the draft of the curriculum, sex education for kindergarteners would entail teaching kids the proper names for body parts in the reproductive system, such as penis, vagina, breast, and testicles. They also would be taught that a baby grows in a woman's uterus. In first grade, students would learn to "understand human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender," according to the proposal.

The board will take up the issue again in August.

If this issue sounds familiar, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., criticized President Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign for backing state legislation that would have set sex education standards for a curriculum for students in K-12 in Illinois.

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